Jacksonville Jaguars: Who will lead the team in sacks in 2016?
By Daniel Lago
Expectations are high for 2015 first round pick Dante Fowler Jr. as he returns from a torn ACL, but is it reasonable to expect him to lead the team in sacks?
The Jacksonville Jaguars defense was an atrocity in 2015 and it really boiled down to one obvious and primary deficiency – the pass rush. Knowing this was an issue before the season, general manager David Caldwell made Dante Fowler Jr. the first defensive player selected in the 2015 NFL Draft. Considered by most to be the best pass rusher in the draft, Fowler never got a chance to show his worth, as a torn ACL in the first rookie minicamp practice ended his rookie season before it even began.
Consequently, the Jaguars had to trot out the underwhelming duo of Chris Clemons and Andre Branch at LEO. Neither player is on the Jaguars anymore and the defense looks notably different at every level.
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Of all the new additions, many consider the most important one to be the return of Fowler. Naturally that means he’s going to lead the team in sacks right?
Phillip Heilman of the Florida Times-Union doesn’t think so
:
"Jaguars: Rookie third-round pass-rusher Yannick Ngakoue will finish with more sacks (81/2) than 2015 first-rounder Dante Fowler (7)."
This is part of a “bold predictions” series so it’s a little bit of a forced notion, but it doesn’t really seem too farfetched. Rookie pass rushers tend to take a little bit of time to get going so Ngakoue and Fowler will be closer in production than you would expect. The real factor in this situation is playing time and I’m not sure Ngakoue is going to rack up as many snaps as Fowler. Coming out of college, Fowler had a knack for contributing on all downs as both a run stopper and pass rusher so I expect him to be on the field effectively all the time. Ngakoue was a notably bad run stopper in college so he’ll likely be deployed exclusively on passing downs as a rookie. He’s going to have to be extremely efficient to produce more sacks than Fowler.
I’ll stick to my gut and say Fowler has more sacks, somewhere in the 8-10 range.